New "PRAM" 30 Times Faster Than Flash

hairyfeet writes, "The EETimes describes the new Samsung memory, phase-change RAM, called PRAM. Samsung is dubbing it 'Perfect RAM' because it is thirty times faster than NOR flash, ten times more durable — and cheaper to produce, to boot." 512-Mbit modules should be available sometime in 2008. None of the initial coverage goes much beyond Samsung's press release. At the same time, Samsung also announced a 40-nm, 32-Gbit NAND flash device.

Comments

Errata + Info + Opinion

[AKAImBatman]

1. Someone's getting their MBits and GBits mixed up. Samsung has announced 32-gigabit (4GB) flash chips, not 32 megabit.

2. NAND has traditionally been shunned in many uses because it can usually only be accessed as a block device, and not a standard ROM device. Which makes it unsuitable for many embedded applications. Thus this chip is probably targetted at the thumb drive market.

3. This is exciting stuff! According to the article, PRAM is supposed to have processing speeds similar to RAM, and does not require erasure or sectoring. The only downside is that they don't give any hard figures on what "fast processing speed" means. Depending on what that actually means, we could start seeing machines that are able to instantly hibernate like EROS, but without the added step of writing to disk.

4. The 512 MBit (64MB) device may sound small, but I imagine that more than one chip will be chained together to create a larger storage device. Samsung will probably also work to produce larger chips once they have all the early production issues worked out.

5. The CIO article is already slow, so I'll add one tidbit they had. According to CIO, Samsung is considering PRAM to be a good fit for replaceing Flash memory in mobile phones. Considering the lower price, this could be a good fit. The only question is, does it use more or less power during read/write cycles?

Re:Errata + Info + Opinion

[AKAImBatman]

Also, what exactly does "three-dimensional transistor structure" mean?

Usually it means that the circuitry is layered or "stacked" in a 3D matrix rather than the traditional "flat" 2D matrix. This means that you can cram more parts per square centimeter because your circuits have depth as well as width and length.

Re:Errata + Info + Opinion

[mabhatter654]

no, current chips are 2.5D. basically they're just a series of circut "maps" laid on top of each other. Not much is different from circuit boards except they're a lot smaller. Look at it this way, no matter how many "maps" you pile on top of each other, you'll never have the simplicity of a globe, or a stack of blocks. Some of the new stuff does actual processing in the 3rd dimension.. in other words components and processing are stacked thru the layers, touching directly, which something that most chips still don't do.

This is Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone here should have a general idea, what Flash-Memory is. PRAM, on the other hand...

Posting anonymously, as otherwise it would fall under the term of "Karma whoring": "Often these will be needless information (such as a link to a Wikipedia article relevant to the subject being discussed)..."

Sorry, for being so blatantly direct...

Re:New tech? We still get stuck

[Znork]

CDs and music in general are subject to monopoly rights, and thus have no actual competition. Prices on them will rise to absorb any economic elbow room available, and even worse, the cost structure will adjust to the revenue, essentially negating the entire purpose of a free market economy.

Memory on the other hand is interchangable with other memory, thus subject to a much more fierce competition, which drives prices down.

Re:Advantages

[networkBoy]

Maybe, but thermal durability is not there.
Phase Change Memory (PCM) is thermally unstable (double edged sword). Durring reflow the temp is high enough to blank the device, so no factory programming. Devices will have to be in-circuit programmed.

Good side: increminating evidence? just place in toaster or other suitable device and set on high. problem solved.
-nB

Re:Advantages

[networkBoy]

In the case of flash, that speaker was not nearly powerful enough.
Flash uses a floating gate, and the electron tunneling effect to program (charging the gate). This requires roughly 9-12 volts, so there is an internal charge pump. To disturb those electrons on the floating gate, while not actively programming, would take well over 10K Gauss, likely in the 100K Gauss range. Don't have a powerful enough magnet to prove anything with, but the 5K Gauss one didn't do squat to a part.
-nB